It’s a cookbook!
As it is full of gibberish and incomprehensible explanations, it could very well be the first thinking machine handbook.
mr. jp writes:
> How likely is it that there is an extinct language that we don’t know about?
Very unlikely (assuming it was written in an European language.) Remember that it’s from somewhere between 1404 and 1438. That’s not some ancient time period that we know almost nothing about. That’s the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, and we have lots of records from then. Some of the things in the manuscript don’t fit any possible language. Even if it was, say, an obscure dialect of a Romance language, there wouldn’t be a community of speakers of it using a script that’s known nowhere else:
… it could very well be a 12-year-old’s diary.
slight hijack: when did they start to number the pages in books?
Wikicommons photographs of the V ms. show the pages being numbered ( sorry link eaten by gerbils ); were these added later?
Yeup, added later. They’re also in common arabic numerals, so they’re no help in any way.
No way is this bullshit “manuscript” anything other than either a hoax or a work of compulsive Charles Crumb-style graphomania.
Look at the “words.” They keep repeating the same characters over and over. gollog gollog gollodg gollodg gollog gollog.
No real language looks like this and you don’t have to be an expert to know it.
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.
Also, it could be prayer or some sort of poetry. I’m not an expert, so I’m not willing to rule those out without more information.
Find me a single book, magazine, newspaper, website, or anything else in which the sentence “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” or anything similar appears without being an example of weird things that theoretically could be written. Find me such an example in any language. Things like this occur a number of times in the Voynich manuscript.
I’m not saying that’s normal or that the manuscript is either authentic or sensible. I already suggested that it’s an example of compulsion and possibly schizophrenia. I’m merely pointing out that it is possible to have a sentence that consists of one word repeated, so that can’t be automatically ruled out without a greater understanding of the context.
A sentence like “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” isn’t just rare. It’s so rare that I don’t believe any sentence like it has ever appeared in print except as an example of a weird sentence that no one would naturally use. It’s basically incomprehensible. Sure, you can think up a meaning and slowly go through the sentence and show that you can strain to make it mean that, but nobody would understand it without having it explained to them. Nobody ever naturally writes sentences like that, and nobody ever naturally understands sentences like that. And passages somewhat similar to that appear a number of times in the manuscript. The idea that this excruciatingly rare sort of thing would appear several times in a manuscript that uses just ordinary language (no matter what language it is) is so utterly improbable that it can be ignored.
You don’t solve problems like this by coming up with absurdly unlikely solutions and saying, “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it? So that proves it.” Even though the ideas of it being a hoax or a scam or the writings of a schizophrenic or a bizarre work of art are pretty unlikely, they’re still more likely than it being ordinary language. I think that we just don’t know enough as yet to say what the manuscript is.
Has anyone said that?
If Wikipedia is correct on this point, the Voynich Manuscript does not contain lengthy repetitions like “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo”. The Wiki article says “The text seems to be more repetitive than typical European languages; there are instances where the same common word appears up to three times in a row” (bolding mine).
This doesn’t strike me as being all THAT weird. In modern English it’s fairly common for words to be repeated for emphasis in poetry, song lyrics, or casual writing and speech. While I would not expect to see something like “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” in a manuscript, something like “The berries of this plant are very very poisonous, so be very very VERY careful when handling them” seems quirky but plausible.
Firstly, could you please provide the evidence that the manuscript ever does this?
Ahh, yeah, real languages do look exactly like that, especially technical documents. Any expert in any field could tell you that.
Or in translation:
Bufo bufo bufog bufogd bufodg buffogg.
Stevia steviag steviagdg steviadg steviag steviag
Rongo rongo rongog rongog rongod rongogd rongogd rongodg rongogd rongogg rongo rongo rongog rongod
Claiming that “real” languages never produce strings like this has no basis in reality. Even in English you can get very similar strings. In a language where tense, relationship and status is conveyed by suffixes such strings would be ubiquitous.
Let’s suppose that “D” is a suffix that indicates possession, much like “apostrophe s” in English.
And “G” indicates past tense.
And “F” indicates future tense.
And “S” indicates official function
And “K” indicates private function.
The we write the following sentence:
Wagga Wagga permitted Wagga Wagga Realty to develop a block of land in the town of Wagga Wagga by building a number of units on the property for the purpose of providing affordable accommodation to the residents of Wagga Wagga.
Translates to
Wagga WaggaS Wagga WaggaK Realty permitted Wagga WaggaG to develop a block of land by building a number of units on the property for the purpose of providing affordable accommodation to the residents of Wagga WaggaFG.
None of the examples I have given are particularly contrived and similar readily be found in any academic or legal text. The most contrived point was the use of the already repetitive “Wagga Wagga”. But since a great many languages routinely use such repetition it’ hardly contrived to suggest that an unknown language that displays a lot of repetition is also doing so.
To me it doesn’t appear at all odd. Many languages routinely use repetition (technically reduplication) for emphasis (as in Polynesian languages) or plural (as in Aboriginal languages). Since the text frequently uses repetition it is not absurd to assume such is the case in this language.
If that is the case then it would be astounding if there were *not *numerous cases of words being repeated three times. Even if the language structure were otherwise identical to English, we should see triple repetitions any time that an English possessive is followed by the same in plural or emphatic.
For example “The doctor’s doctors ordered him to rest” or “The chemical plant’s plants, planted last spring, were all destroyed by ecoterrorists” for plurals or “A man’s man” or “The Major’s major achievement” for emphasis.
Such sentence constructions aren’t all that rare, even in English. If the language in question uses reduplication for plural or emphasis it would be weird not to see the same common word repeated 3 or more times.
In many Aboriginal languages such reduplication is ubiquitous. So for example finding a lot of water a location known as “The place of many water” would lead to the expression “Gin gin gin gin”. Saying that no real languages produce such construction’s belies an ignorance of how weird real languages get.
Really? So a word like “ixw ixw ixwd” would never occur in any ordinary language? Ever?
Are you absolutely sure of that?
Has anybody done that?
So you are certain that no ordinary language would routinely include sentences such as “kaw kaw kaw d”
You are certain that no language would include such constructions in most sentences?
You’re changing what I said. I said that no natural example (i.e., an example that was anything except a deliberate attempt to show a hopelessly strained case) of the sentence “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” has ever appeared anywhere. Your examples are “ixw ixw ixwd” and “kaw kaw kaw d”. That’s considerablely different. I can use Google too, so I know that “kaw kaw kaw” appears in Malay. I used “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” because that was the example someone used in a previous post. The claim in that post was that because it’s possible to come up with an absurdly strained interpretation of “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo”, it’s therefore a natural sentence.
Incidentally, I talked about “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” because someone else in this thread appeared to me to be claiming that something close to it is in the manuscript. Claiming now that no such construction ever appears in the manuscript and that it was my fault for taking that claim seriously is on the same level as lying to someone and then laughing at them for being stupid enough to be fooled. Look, give me a complete list of all the repetitions of the same word twice in the manuscript. Give me a complete list of all the repetitions of the same word three times in the manuscript. Give me a complete list of all the repetitions of the same word four times in the manuscript. And etc. Give me a complete list of all near repetitions of the same word twice. Give me a complete list of all near repetitions of the same word three times. And etc. Once I know that, I can make some reasonable estimate of the likelihood of such things all appearing in the same manuscript. Until then, there’s nothing more to say.
I think it could be short for, I had Buffalo Wings, after hunting Buffalo in Buffalo, NY, with Bouef-alo Mozz and Buffalo sauce after watching the buffalo beheadment in Apocalypse Now, with my friend Buff… whom I took to Roche’ de Bouef the other day…
The problem is that you already said it. You said outright that it was unlikely to be an ordinary language.
You didn’t say that you lacked sufficient information to determine likelihood, as you are attempting to do now. You stated that “Even though the ideas of it being a hoax or a scam or the writings of a schizophrenic or a bizarre work of art are pretty unlikely, they’re still more likely than it being ordinary language.”
This is the problem. you made a bald statement about the likelihood of this being a real language. And you now admit that you did so without sufficient information upon which to make such a judgement.
Real languages do routinely contain multiple repetitions such as “ixw ixw ixwd” and ““kaw kaw kaw d”” And FYI, neither is Malay. The letters have been changed to prevent Googling, but both are examples taken from random phonetic translations of the same New World language.
This is why claims that it is unlikely to be a real language or that real languages don’t contain such repetition are indicative of ignorance of the weirdness of real languages. Real languages can look damn weird when written down. Some, such as the example I used, contain multiple repetitions or semi-repetitions in almost every sentence.
Your claim that repetitions would never appear multiple times in a manuscript using ordinary language can not be substantiated. In some ordinary languages such multiple repetitions would be commonplace.